Saturday, 23 May 2009
Pakistani Ambassador to Turkey Sardar Tariq Azizuddin yesterday reacted cynically to news reports suggesting that former US Vice President Dick Cheney had ordered the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Earlier this week numerous Internet news sites and mainstream publications, including media outlets in Turkey, ran a story suggesting that Cheney was linked to Bhutto's assassination, citing remarks by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. However, speaking with www.rawstory.com Investigative News Editor Larisa Alexandrovna, Hersh denied reports that he told an Arab television network that Cheney ordered Bhutto's assassination.
"I'm as surprised as you are. But I cannot put such a thing past Cheney," Azizuddin responded when asked by a journalist about the news reports.
The Pakistani ambassador was speaking with a group of experts and journalists at a round-table meeting hosted by the Ankara-based International Strategic Research Organization (ISRO/USAK).
"If that is what Seymour Hersh said -- since he is an American citizen, he knows American psychology better than all of us -- then those remarks should be taken seriously," Azizuddin added.
Alexa Cassanos, director of public relations at The New Yorker, which publishes Hersh's articles, said they were not sure where the story attributed to Hersh came from. The same stories also claimed that Hersh had said former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was the key figure behind the plot.
Azizuddin also said Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's recent remarks in an interview with NBC television had been misinterpreted.
"You [Americans] have been there for eight years, you tell me. You lost him [Osama Bin Laden] in Tora Bora, I didn't. I was in prison," Zardari said in response to a question about the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts. The Battle of Tora Bora was a military engagement that took place in Afghanistan in December 2001, during the opening stages of the War on Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.
Washington and its allies believed that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was hiding in the rugged mountains of Tora Bora but, despite overwhelming and frequent shelling of Taliban and al-Qaeda positions, they failed to kill or capture him.
"Pakistani forces never held bin Laden, but they reported and conveyed intelligence to US forces about his whereabouts," Azizuddin said in response to news reports claiming that Zardari had suggested that Pakistani forces captured bin Laden and handed him over to US forces but that US forces released him.
